[3.8.y.z,extended,stable] Patch "mm: teach mm by current context info to not do I/O during memory" has been added to staging queue

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    mm: teach mm by current context info to not do I/O during memory

to the linux-3.8.y-queue branch of the 3.8.y.z extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.8.y-queue

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.8.y.z tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Kamal

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From 6ecffa25251e5631f23cdef7a1d3e6d10c907dcd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ming Lei <ming.lei@canonical.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:34:08 -0800
Subject: mm: teach mm by current context info to not do I/O during memory
 allocation

commit 21caf2fc1931b485483ddd254b634fa8f0099963 upstream.

This patch introduces PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO on process flag('flags' field of
'struct task_struct'), so that the flag can be set by one task to avoid
doing I/O inside memory allocation in the task's context.

The patch trys to solve one deadlock problem caused by block device, and
the problem may happen at least in the below situations:

- during block device runtime resume, if memory allocation with
  GFP_KERNEL is called inside runtime resume callback of any one of its
  ancestors(or the block device itself), the deadlock may be triggered
  inside the memory allocation since it might not complete until the block
  device becomes active and the involed page I/O finishes.  The situation
  is pointed out first by Alan Stern.  It is not a good approach to
  convert all GFP_KERNEL[1] in the path into GFP_NOIO because several
  subsystems may be involved(for example, PCI, USB and SCSI may be
  involved for usb mass stoarage device, network devices involved too in
  the iSCSI case)

- during block device runtime suspend, because runtime resume need to
  wait for completion of concurrent runtime suspend.

- during error handling of usb mass storage deivce, USB bus reset will
  be put on the device, so there shouldn't have any memory allocation with
  GFP_KERNEL during USB bus reset, otherwise the deadlock similar with
  above may be triggered.  Unfortunately, any usb device may include one
  mass storage interface in theory, so it requires all usb interface
  drivers to handle the situation.  In fact, most usb drivers don't know
  how to handle bus reset on the device and don't provide .pre_set() and
  .post_reset() callback at all, so USB core has to unbind and bind driver
  for these devices.  So it is still not practical to resort to GFP_NOIO
  for solving the problem.

Also the introduced solution can be used by block subsystem or block
drivers too, for example, set the PF_MEMALLOC_NOIO flag before doing
actual I/O transfer.

It is not a good idea to convert all these GFP_KERNEL in the affected
path into GFP_NOIO because these functions doing that may be implemented
as library and will be called in many other contexts.

In fact, memalloc_noio_flags() can convert some of current static
GFP_NOIO allocation into GFP_KERNEL back in other non-affected contexts,
at least almost all GFP_NOIO in USB subsystem can be converted into
GFP_KERNEL after applying the approach and make allocation with GFP_NOIO
only happen in runtime resume/bus reset/block I/O transfer contexts
generally.

[1], several GFP_KERNEL allocation examples in runtime resume path

- pci subsystem
acpi_os_allocate
	<-acpi_ut_allocate
		<-ACPI_ALLOCATE_ZEROED
			<-acpi_evaluate_object
				<-__acpi_bus_set_power
					<-acpi_bus_set_power
						<-acpi_pci_set_power_state
							<-platform_pci_set_power_state
								<-pci_platform_power_transition
									<-__pci_complete_power_transition
										<-pci_set_power_state
											<-pci_restore_standard_config
												<-pci_pm_runtime_resume
- usb subsystem
usb_get_status
	<-finish_port_resume
		<-usb_port_resume
			<-generic_resume
				<-usb_resume_device
					<-usb_resume_both
						<-usb_runtime_resume

- some individual usb drivers
usblp, uvc, gspca, most of dvb-usb-v2 media drivers, cpia2, az6007, ....

That is just what I have found.  Unfortunately, this allocation can only
be found by human being now, and there should be many not found since
any function in the resume path(call tree) may allocate memory with
GFP_KERNEL.

Signed-off-by: Ming Lei <ming.lei@canonical.com>
Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>
Cc: Oliver Neukum <oneukum@suse.de>
Cc: Jiri Kosina <jiri.kosina@suse.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@csn.ul.ie>
Cc: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@sisk.pl>
Cc: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Cc: David Decotigny <david.decotigny@google.com>
Cc: Tom Herbert <therbert@google.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
[ kamal: backport to 3.8 ]
Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal@canonical.com>
---
 include/linux/sched.h | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 mm/page_alloc.c       |  9 ++++++++-
 mm/vmscan.c           |  4 ++--
 3 files changed, 32 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

--
1.8.1.2